37 Aftermath and a late-night visitor
A/N: First of all, thanks for all the uplifting comments and reviews on the last chapter. It really helped. I'm now over it and have hopefully become a better man. (Wait a second! Am I going through character growth myself?! Huh... Who would have thought I would experience something like that while writing an eroge story with smut as one of its main themes… Mind-boggling.) And I added an additional disclaimer in the auxiliary volume to be safer in the future.
Anyway, I love you all for the kind support you've shown me so far! (platonically)(no homo)(gives socks?)
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Also, 134 POWER STONES! Woo! That's the highest I've got so far in a day. Thank you, kind readers!
It's not quite 150, but I'll show you guys some lenience and give you a double release as promised! Including the first lemon chapter! Yes, praise me, mortals. I bring you the almighty LEMON! :D
Enjoy. :)
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Today's party turned out to be quite hectic. I had to rehearse a lot for it and so I was happy once it was all over and I had not screwed up. I felt like an actor who had successfully performed his drama in front of an audience. I think that goes to show how I took this whole thing as. A big fucking drama.
Anyway, once an hour passed after I had given candies to the girls, the guests finally left. Even the princess left after an hour or two, though she did stay longer to converse with my mother and Olivia in private. Probably something official, if I had to guess. And yes, she was fed food before she left. That made her happy and content and made her look at our family with more favor. Poor girl.
It was such a strange thing that the Princess of the most powerful Empire on this continent was hungry. Did her servants not realize that and arrange food? Why? That and the part where she was allowed to take candy from a suspicious—I mean, an upright and honorable young noble together were enough to send them to jail. Weird.
After that was wrapped, we took a little break and then gathered to open all the presents. And, oh boy, it was filled with all sorts of things, all sorts of junk the nobles fancied. There were a few books and some nicely decorated swords which were better than the usual gifts comprised of bouquets, vases, paintings, accessories (for males), perfume(for males), wines, and all sorts of things wrapped in fancy boxes that I didn't really care for. To be fair, they didn't really know what I liked, so they ended up giving me whatever they fancied and I got these gifts.
Ah, but I did quite like one of the paintings with a red dragon. I decided to have it hung in my room. Dragons are cool.
'Let's see. It was from the Dukes… Oh, it was from Ember's family. Not bad.'
Two other items ticked my fantasy as well, but the dragon painting was the coolest. One of the other two was from the Princess, by the way.
***
Later that night after I had dinner with my family, I stayed till late, playing with one of my gifts. I didn't feel sleepy so I stayed up with the lights dimmed. The moon had graced the sky and from the window in front of my bed, I could see the somewhat cloudy night. It felt cold and the night was windy, but I was comfortable in my warm bed.
I yawned as I wondered what I'll do from now on. I only had 2 years left till the academy and to be honest, my progress was… behind the schedule. I had misjudged a few things at the beginning. One of them was that I could easily learn Maximus's swordsmanship. Turned out, I was horribly wrong. Even after learning the basics and then practicing the main arts for months, I didn't gain the Swordsmanship skill. Even though I could wield a sword some practiced ease now.
Iris had comforted me by saying it was due to my body's growth. At the time, I was still leveling up my 'Perfect Body' skill. And for whatever reason, it hindered me from getting other skills since it took a lot of my body's "potential" to develop my own body. It was confusing and kind of paradoxical. It was hogging up my potential to increase my future potential. What?
But now that it had maxed out, my body was filled with potential. Probably the most potential I could have in this body.
'If I practiced now, surely I would gain the Swordsmanship skill. Maybe I should try a spear and other weapons too? Even though I don't fancy them, having at least their fundamentals learned would be helpful.'
Actually, I did practice spear for a little while for fun, but it just wasn't my cup of tea, so I stopped.
Secondly, I had to start learning magic. This was an important goal. Even more important than swordsmanship itself.
I had an excess amount of mana in my body and thanks to my high INT and platinum grade potential, I could breeze through it with relative ease.
'Yes, I'll learn the fundamentals by the end of next week and then try to learn as many spells as I can. It's so annoying that you have to actually learn and practice the encantation and magic circle for each spell if you don't have a spellbook. It was so easy to learn magic in the game. Just use the spell book or buy the magic and boom, you can shoot firebolts and stuff.
Eh, but I can still get those spellbooks if I ask mother. Being the heir of a Marquis has its benefits and having a large amount of money and resources readily available are two of them.'
I browsed through the (Eroge) shop to see if they had magic spells I could learn.
They did, but…
'Right, they just had to have the weird ones. Looking into the everyday spells, I found quite a few weird ones. A spell to impregnate any woman, regardless of their race or age. No thanks. Don't need it. A spell to stop pregnancy… not needed yet. A spell for cleansing. Oh, this one is actually nice. Let's see the description… And of course, they'll suggest you use it to clean after sex. Well, I'll buy it anyway. It seems useful to have the ability to cast "cleanse" when you want. Plus, it's one of the more reasonably priced ones on the list.'
35000 AP were spent on a single spell.
I absorbed the skill immediately.
It hurt quite a lot to see that much AP gone in an instant, but it wasn't a bad deal. Considering most offensive spells cost anywhere from 500k to 100 million and each had some form of "quirk" or drawback, it was safe to say they weren't worth spending my hard-earned AP on. Not that I had that much anyway. And cleanse was one of those spells that they had here, but this world's Cleanse skill was much inferior to the one I had bought. Part of the reason why people didn't generally use it as everyday magic.
I would still be better off learning spells from this world's spell books instead. And I had some means to procure Advanced and higher spells from certain places. I just hoped they were still there. The world was not the same as in the game, so everything was subject to change.
[Skill: Cleanse
Type: Active
Rarity: Uncommon
Effect: A smart spell that cleans targeted 'impurities' from the user's outer body or other selected items having a surface area.
–Mana cost varies depending on the surface area and the nature of the impurities.
Note: Can only be used on singular items, that do not exceed the surface area of 10 m2.]
'How much is the surface area of an average human?'
[Around 2 m2.]
'Oh. Thanks, Siri.'
[No problem, John.]
I chuckled at her retort.
I tried casting the spell on myself and immediately I felt that mana was being sucked from my core and then released outside, changing form and then turning back to my body and wrapping it completely in a transparent wet mist of sorts. I felt a sense of freshness. It was pleasant as if I had just finished bathing.
Yup, I now had the means to keep myself cleaned even without taking a bath daily. Noice. Not to say that I didn't like taking baths. I did. But having a simpler alternative is nice too. Not everyone has the Japanese protagonist complex over having a must-warm bath. I was fairly tamed in that regard.
Though, the spell did do something I wasn't expecting.
I felt TOO fresh. All of my built-up drowsiness was gone too.
'Great. Now I REALLY am not sleepy. Ugh, FML.'
And so, the night went on for a little longer with me still awake.
'Sigh. Am I seriously going to pull an all-nighter? I don't even have anything to do right now.'
If only I had video games or anime. I wouldn't have minded pulling an all-nighter (or two) with it.
…
A hushed sound of the door knob turning immediately turned my attention towards the door.
'Who is it this time? It's past midnight. Everyone is usually asleep by now.'
I furrowed my brow as I watched the knob turn completely and then the door was slowly opened.
And then I could finally see the late-night visitor.
'Ah, it's her... Oh boy… she looks disturbing…'
But I couldn't say I disliked that look on her face.
Who would have thought I would be visited late at night by someone in this manner? And that too by 'her', and so soon.
Not me, not in my past life. But in this life, that was eventually going to be a recurring thing.
***
